I’ve never had high expectations for the stories in Castlevania games. The series have never really been at home with anything more elaborate than instruction booklet blurbs, and it seemed to me that the best one could ever hope for, given the series’ gameplay mechanics was to get one that at least managed to be low-key and inoffensive. So when I eventually went and got my used copy of Order of Ecclesia—with most of its secrets (including—YES!!– Hard Mode) unlocked—I wasn’t expecting a lot. I certainly wasn´t expecting to be disgusted.

Batman: The Dark Knight Rises is an excellent movie. It is efficiently plotted, has excellent actors, and manages to be both exciting and fun. As I sat in the movie theater with my mother, enthralled, taking everything in and bristling every time my phone vibrated, forcing me to dedicate precious seconds to texting variations of “¡NO MOLESTE! ¡BATMAN!”, a though had settled into my head and refused to leave.

Note: For the uninitiated, here’s a quick and dirty (and severely abriged) Macross-to-Robotech dictionary. Japanese terms to the left, with Harmony Gold’s names at the right .

Super Dimension Fortress Macross –> Robotech

Hikaru Ichijou –> Rick Hunter

Misa Hayase –> Lisa Hayes

Lynn Minmay –> Lynn Minmei

Lynn Kaifun –> Lynn Kyle

In case it wasn’t obvious from my previous post on the subject, I’ve been thinking a lot about Robotech lately, rewatching the entire series on DVD and consuming whatever additional material the internet machine can provide, including material from its source material. Among that is Macross Flashback 2012, the charming OVA featuring Lynn Minmay’s final concert before her departure from Earth in the SDF-2 Megaroad 01. It’s cheery and optimistic, and it presents some interesting contrasts between the approaches Tatsunoko/Studio Nue and Harmony Gold’s took to the character.

While Macross and Robotech both tell the same basic story, the come at it from different places, and both take different things from it. While determining these differences presents some difficulties when they both share the same footage (although not impossible—see “protoculture”) it becomes a bit clearer when you look at what each company produced afterwards, particularly as they relate to the character of Minmei.

For the bulk of both series, Minmei is characterized is the brave, cheerful, inspiring woman whose spirit proves to be greatest single factor in the transformation of the SDF-1’s civilian population from a collection of refugees to a vibrant community, and whose fame helps bridge civilizations and end the war between the human and the Zentraedi. Without firing a single shot, Minmei became as great a war hero as Max Sterling, Lisa Hayes, or Henry Gloval.

When DC announced its New 52 initiative a year ago, I decided it made for a perfect jumping off point. After following DC for little bit more than a decade, I’d grown increasingly dissatisfied with their creative philosophy and the way it affected an ever-larger swath of the books, so when they said that they’d be sorta-but-not-really starting over again in a way that suggested an emphasis on everything I’d grown to dislike about them, it seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up. Sure, I’d miss out on stuff like J.H. Williams III’s Batwoman, or Paul Cornell’s awesome-sounding Demon Knights, but I could still rely on stuff like Young Justice and Superman Family for my DC fix. What’s more, the fact that they weren’t part of the main universe allowed them to do things which I’d always wanted or have been ignored by the main books–stuff like a fixed timeline that allows characters to grow older, a return of the Lois and Clark partnership, and pure, unabashed, fun.

(NOTE: Major spoilers ahead. Do not read unless you’ve already seen the movie or don’t give a damn.)

I have something to confess: as much as I like Spider-Man and his ‘verse, I wasn’t terribly enthusiastic about The Amazing Spider-Man: I just wasn’t sure that it had anything new to add. Sure, we would get The Lizard on film (and, although I didn’t know it at the time, George Stacy), but aside from that, eh.